Marcia Preston - The Butterfly House

Both mothers laughed, in that kids-what-are-you-going-to-do-with-them way parents have when they get together. I glanced at the clock. Mom had gotten off work only twenty minutes ago, but she’d taken time to change out of her pink hotel uniform into a pair of jeans before coming up the hill. She hated that housekeeper’s uniform.

“It was getting dark, so I came to pick you up,” she said. “Besides, I thought it was time I met Cynthia’s mother.”

She was using her kind voice. My muscles relaxed, but only a degree. I looked from her face to Lenora’s, then back again. “I’m spending the night, remember? You said it was okay.”

Cincy stood beside me still holding the eggs in their paper bag, a half smile on her face, her eyes curious as she watched my mother.

Mom shrugged and another mat of cinnamon hair escaped from its plastic clamp. “You must have asked me when I was half asleep.” She turned to Lenora. “Which I often am, after these ten-hour shifts. I’m supposed to get three days off that way, but they’re shorthanded at the hotel and I wind up working five or six days anyway.”

Lenora shook her head. “That’s grueling.”

“Yeah, but anything over forty hours is time and a half.” She straightened in the chair and pressed both hands to the small of her back. “Thank God I’m off tomorrow.”

“Bobbie’s welcome to stay tonight,” Lenora said. “You could sleep late.”

Mom looked at me. “Bobbie?”

I hadn’t told her my nickname and the stamp of her disapproval was clear.

“Please, can she stay?” Cincy said. “Two of our cecropia moths are supposed to hatch tomorrow.”

I knew the verdict before she answered. Begging would only bring trouble later.

“Maybe next weekend,” my mother said. “I haven’t had a Saturday off in a long time. Roberta and I need to do some shopping.”

“Of course.” Lenora’s voice was open and friendly. “But please know that Bobbie’s always welcome. Any weekend you have to work, send her up. I’m always home.”

The slightest stiffening of my mother’s neck sent me into action. “I’ll get my bag.”

I ran to Cincy’s room, snatched my pillowcase satchel from the debris on her bed and flew back to the kitchen, afraid to let something happen in my absence. Cincy stood where I’d left her, still watching my mom with intense interest. I wondered what she saw. They had met once before, at my house, but only for a few minutes when Cincy and I had gone by after school to leave Mom a note and found her home unexpectedly. That day, she’d taken off work with one of her headaches and was glad enough for us to leave her alone.

“I’ll call you tomorrow to see if they hatched,” I said to Cincy.

“Okay. If they have, maybe you can come up and see them after you get back.”

“Get back?”

Cincy looked at me. “From shopping.” Her voice sounded envious.

“Oh. Okay.”

With sudden understanding, I realized Cincy was picturing a mother-daughter day out, perhaps trying on clothes as she loved to do. I wondered if Lenora thought that, too. She gave me a smile but I couldn’t read her eyes.

On the short drive down the hill, my mother and I didn’t talk. A pale amber moon had risen in the southeast, glittering the wide surface of the Columbia as our tires rumbled onto the bridge. This bridge was the last wooden structure on the entire river, my teacher had said. I rolled down the window, but I couldn’t feel the magical pull of the river the way I did when I crossed the bridge alone. Tonight the river was only a deep-slumbering giant, distant from the lives of little girls.

Mom began to sing, her voice silvery and clear as the light off the river. “I see the moon, the moon sees me, down through the leaves of the old oak tree. Please let the light that shines on me, shine on the one I love.”

The tires rumbled off the bridge and onto the blacktop beyond. “So I guess now you’re mad at me,” she said.

I didn’t answer. I stared ahead toward the sparse lights of Shady River.

“I was lonesome for you, honey.” Her voice was soft now, conciliatory. “Seems like we’re never home at the same time. At least, not awake.”

The knot in my chest softened, but I still had nothing to say. I took in a deep breath that smelled of the river.

My mother sighed and changed tactics. “What in the world is a see-crap-ya moth?”

I burst into giggles, knowing I’d been tricked but grateful to give up the painful anger. “Not crap-ya! Cecropia. It’s a huge moth that doesn’t have a mouth. It can’t eat so it doesn’t live very long.”

I linked my thumbs and pressed the fingers of each hand together, like wings. Moonlight animated my hands with shadows. “The caterpillar spins a silk cocoon that’s brown and hairy, like a coconut. But smaller, of course. Lenora counts the days and knows when it’s supposed to hatch.”

Caught up in the mystery of metamorphosis, I watched my hands act out the drama. “When it’s ready, it gives off some kind of juice that makes a hole in the cocoon, and it crawls out. Its wings are all wet and crinkled up on its back. As they dry out they expand, like a bud opening into a flower.”

“Lenora told you all this?”

“Uh-huh. She’s seen it happen.”

“Yuk,” Mom said, and shuddered. “Sounds disgusting.”

She began to sing again. “Through thick and through thin, all out or all in, but we’ll muddle through ….”

She paused, waiting for me to join in, but I wasn’t in the mood.

“To-geth-er,” she finished.

It was her traveling song. She’d sung it as we drove the miles from Atlanta to Oklahoma City, from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque, from there to Shady River. Bored on the long drives, I added my unmusical voice to her firm, resonant one, a kazoo accompanying a violin. Somewhere along the miles, listening to my mother’s voice, I came to believe that everyone in the world has at least one gift. I wondered what mine might be. Maybe I’d be a scientist, like Lenora. Once I’d caught up with my classmates, I turned out to be smart at school. Maybe I’d win the no-bell prize for science that my teacher had mentioned, though I couldn’t figure out what bells had to do with it.

Mom parked the old Ford Fairlane in the beat-out track beneath the carport. She’d stopped singing now, her mind on other diversions. I recognized that quietness.

Inside the house, I queried the darkness for Rathbone, the stray cat who’d adopted us part-time. “Kitty, kitty?”

No answer. Somehow Rathbone managed to come and go from the house as he pleased. Mom probably forgot to close one of the windows.

She switched on the small light over the kitchen stove and made bologna sandwiches, pouring milk for me, wine for her. I ate my sandwich and left the milk. She left half her sandwich but drank the wine and refilled her glass.

“Get ready for bed, honey. It’s getting late,” she said.

In my tiny bedroom, hardly larger than Cincy’s walk-in closet, I donned the oversize T-shirt I used for a nightgown, then went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth over the stained sink. When I came back to say good-night, Mom was sitting on one end of the sofa in the darkened living room, her feet curled beneath her. She offered a one-armed, halfhearted hug.

The faint disinfectant scent she always carried from her job mingled with the stronger odor of wine. I knew that, in the darkness, the wine bottle sat on the end table next to her.

“You ought to go to bed now, too,” I said, resting my head against her soft breast. “You’re always tired.”

“I will, honey. Pretty quick. Sleep tight, now.” She kissed my hair, dismissing me.